Even Bryan Danielson’s Family Divided on His AEW All In Victory

With All In just days away, nearly the entire AEW roster has flocked to the UK to promote the company’s biggest event of the year. Stars like Bryan Danielson, Swerve Strickland, Mariah May, Toni Storm, and even Mercedes Mone through her Mone Mag Weekly have been using their platforms to attract more attention to the promotion.

For Bryan Danielson, this involves explaining the stakes of his upcoming match with the AEW World Champion. If he doesn’t secure the win, his in-ring career could be over. Discussing this high-stakes bout with the BBC, Danielson shared that he’s bringing his whole family to London for the occasion, although his daughter Birdie isn’t thrilled about seeing him wrestle.

“Yeah, it’ll be the first time my son’s ever seen me wrestle live. My daughter got to see me wrestle live at WrestleMania 35, but she was two years old and doesn’t remember. It’s exciting for our family. My wife will be there, my kids will be there. My son hopes I win but also wants to see me get beat up a little bit,” Danielson revealed to the BBC via Fightful.

“My daughter doesn’t want to see me get beat up, but she hopes I lose so that I can come home and just be a dad [laughs]. The big shift in my daughter came last year when I broke my arm. I wasn’t able to do All In last year because I had broken my arm two months prior. That whole process was hard for her. She saw Daddy hurt, and she did not like that. Shortly after that, I came back for about six weeks and ended up with two fractures in my orbital bone. It was tough for her to see Daddy going through these injuries, so she’s really looking forward to this match.”

Danielson is largely retiring because of Birdie, who dislikes seeing her father hurt and away from home. The “American Dragon” plans to transition away from full-time in-ring action, focusing instead on helping AEW grow as a backstage advisor and spokesperson. This change hinges on him agreeing to a new deal with AEW, something that has proven challenging for Tony Khan due to Danielson’s tendency to ignore his phone.

In a recent interview with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp, Danielson discussed his contract status ahead of All In. He mentioned that he doesn’t have a new deal mainly because he’s difficult to reach, with 4,000 unread texts and even more unread emails where a new AEW contract might be hidden.

“Not a single person. People who really know me understand that I don’t look at my phone very much. For this interview, the AEW representative and my manager were reaching out to me, and my manager ended up calling my wife. Then my wife called me to remind me that I had media obligations this morning. It’s a blessing and a curse. It allows me to be more in the moment with my wife and kids, but when people really want to get ahold of me, I’m not available,” Danielson told Fightful.

“That said, right now I have 3,998 unread text messages. I’m almost at 4,000. There are also many missed calls. There could have been someone trying to reach me about a contract, but it would require me to go through all my missed text messages.”

Nothing is set in stone regarding Danielson’s future, but Tony Khan has expressed a strong desire to keep him within AEW’s orbit for the rest of his life. Khan has even suggested that if anything ever happened to him, Bryan Danielson would be the first person his father should call to organize an episode of Dynamite, Rampage, or Collision. Whether or not Danielson agrees to a new deal will largely depend on what his family—Brie, Birdie, and Buddy—decides is best for their future. It’s clear that this decision involves more than just the “American Dragon.”